by J. M. Barrie
When their voices died away there came cold silence over the lagoon, and then a feeble cry.
“Help, help!”
Mabel Lucie Attwell, Peter Pan and Wendy, 1921. (Lucie Attwell Ltd. Courtesy of Vicki Thomas Associates)
Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had fainted and lay on the boy’s arm. With a last effort Peter pulled her up the rock and then lay down beside her. Even as he also fainted he saw that the water was rising. He knew that they would soon be drowned, but he could do no more.
As they lay side by side a mermaid caught Wendy by the feet, and began pulling her softly into the water. Peter, feeling her slip from him, woke with a start, and was just in time to draw her back. But he had to tell her the truth.
“We are on the rock, Wendy,” he said, “but it is growing smaller. Soon the water will be over it.”
She did not understand even now.
“We must go,” she said, almost brightly.
“Yes,” he answered faintly.
“Shall we swim or fly, Peter?”
He had to tell her.
“Do you think you could swim or fly as far as the island, Wendy, without my help?”
She had to admit that she was too tired.
He moaned.
“What is it?” she asked, anxious about him at once.
“I can’t help you, Wendy. Hook wounded me. I can neither fly nor swim.”
“Do you mean we shall both be drowned?”
“Look how the water is rising.”
They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the sight. They thought they would soon be no more. As they sat thus something brushed against Peter as light as a kiss, and stayed there, as if saying timidly, “Can I be of any use?”
It was the tail of a kite, which Michael had made some days before. It had torn itself out of his hand and floated away.
“Michael’s kite,” Peter said without interest, but next moment he had seized the tail, and was pulling the kite toward him.
“It lifted Michael off the ground,” he cried; “why should it not carry you?”
“Both of us!”
“It can’t lift two; Michael and Curly tried.”
“Let us draw lots,” Wendy said bravely.
“And you a lady; never.” Already he had tied the tail round her. She clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with a “Good-bye, Wendy,” he pushed her from the rock; and in a few minutes she was borne out of his sight. Peter was alone on the lagoon.
The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”15
1. If you shut your eyes. The lagoon appears to be an optical illusion, a place located in the mind’s eye. Creating the colors of the lagoon and its structure seems possible for every mortal. Far harder is the talent for seeing the surf, hearing the song of the mermaids, and swimming in the lagoon, as children do. In the screenplay for the silent version of Peter Pan, Barrie hinted at a connection between Eden and Neverland when he described the origin of fairies: “Then the scene is a primeval wood. Adam and Eve leave their child on the ground. They go. The child laughs and kicks joyously. Then the picture is full of little splashes whirling about like falling leaves, and when they come to rest they are gay little fairies.”
2. bubbles of many colours made in rainbow water. Barrie had a gift for understanding exactly what appeals to the imagination of children, and his invention of bubbles that serve both as balls and (in the play version) as vehicles of flight gives us the poetry of childhood objects. Children tend to be fascinated by glitter, sparkle, rainbows, fireworks, kaleidoscopes, and in general by the play of color and light. The bubbles made of rainbow water are batted about under rainbows to create a world of rare visual beauty.
3. the mermaids immediately disappeared. Although the narrator suggests that the mermaids are too arrogant to play with mere mortals and therefore avoid them, the fact that they disappear reminds us that they are make-believe. Barrie’s mermaid lagoon may have been inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” which has a more fully elaborated undersea realm. Recall that Andersen’s name is woven into the front stage curtain of Peter Pan.
4. happy hunting-ground. The Native American afterlife is designated as a paradise where game is plentiful and hunting unlimited.
5. “Luff, you lubber.” To “luff” is to bring the bow of a sailing ship into the wind. A “lubber” is a clumsy sailor.
6. he now imitated the voice of Hook. Peter can “imitate the Captain’s voice so perfectly,” we read, in the stage directions to Peter Pan, “that even the author has a dizzy feeling that at times he was really Hook.” At the end of the play, Peter appears “on the poop in Hook’s hat and cigars, and with a small iron claw.” And in the novel, Peter sits in Hook’s cabin, cigar holder in mouth, with one hand clenched, “held threateningly aloft like a hook.” The two are presented as antagonists with a shared secret core.
7. “Brimstone and gall.” Brimstone was once the common name for sulfur, and is now rarely used except in the biblical phrase “fire and brimstone.” Hook combines sulfur with bile to produce his unusual curse.
8. “what cozening is going on here!” “Cozen” means to “cheat” or “defraud.”
9. “I am James Hook.” Here, as on several other occasions, Peter becomes Hook’s double. Invoked as the spirit that “haunts” the lagoon, he answers Hook’s questions but also leads Hook to echo his own voice.
10. a touch of the feminine. Hook’s curls, his dress, and his mannerisms all create the effeminate effects described here, reminding us that—despite the gendered division of labor—there is also frequent gender confusion in Neverland, with its sewing pirates and brave warrior princesses.
11. Peter could never resist a game. For Peter, everything becomes a game: eating, playing house, and even killing. In the middle of combat, he “would change sides,” in which case the fascinated redskins agree to be lost boys.
12. “lam into the pirates.” “Lam into” is schoolboy slang and is used chiefly in reference to beating a person soundly or thrashing someone.
13. pinked. To “pink” is to stab or pierce with a sharp weapon.
14. Had it been so with Peter at that moment I would admit it. On several occasions the intrusive narrator reveals that he has privileged access to Peter’s thoughts and feelings. “I would admit it” is a strange turn of phrase for suggesting that he would give a fair representation of what is on his own character’s mind.
15. “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” That the fear of death or negation of death can turn into a death wish becomes evident from this moment in the play.
George Llewelyn Davies first uttered the famous line that ends chapter 8 when Barrie described to him how Peter Pan guides dead children to Neverland. (Barrie sometimes offered small royalty payments, with mock contracts, to the five Llewelyn Davies brothers when he used their phrasing in a work.) In the final stage direction for the play, Peter’s resistance to love and domesticity receives the following gloss: “If he could get the hang of the thing, his cry might become ‘To live would be an awfully big adventure.’ ”
Readers of the Harry Potter books will recall Dumbledore’s declaration that “to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure” (J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 297). The line was most likely inspired by Peter Pan’s words, which reveal fearlessness in the face of death and the capacity to
turn every experience into an adventure.
As noted earlier, Charles Frohman, the renowned theatrical entrepreneur who had sponsored the first production of Peter Pan, went down on the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. One of the survivors reported that he continued smoking his cigar and talking with his fellow passengers even after the ship was hit. As passengers clung to the railings and the cold waters rose, Frohman remained calm and declared to the others: “Why fear death? It is the greatest adventure in life” (Hayter-Menzies 78). Frohman’s remark contributed to a discourse establishing unsettling connections linking death, adventure, and World War I with the play Peter Pan. The historian Michael C. C. Adams points out that masculinity was framed in the war era as a turning away from marriage and domestic life and a desire to follow the siren song of fearlessness in the face of death and to embrace patriotic duty and sacrifice. Theodore Roosevelt, whose son was shot down in a fighter jet in 1918, described life and death as part of the “same Great Adventure.” “Therefore it is that the man who is not willing to die, and the woman who is not willing to send her man to die,” he added, “in a war for a great cause, are not worthy to live” (Kavey 67).
CHAPTER 9
The Never Bird
The last sounds Peter heard before he was quite alone were the mermaids retiring one by one to their bedchambers under the sea. He was too far away to hear their doors shut; but every door in the coral caves where they live rings a tiny bell when it opens or closes (as in all the nicest houses on the mainland), and he heard the bells.
Steadily the waters rose till they were nibbling at his feet; and to pass the time until they made their final gulp, he watched the only thing on the lagoon. He thought it was a piece of floating paper, perhaps part of the kite, and wondered idly how long it would take to drift ashore.
Presently he noticed as an odd thing that it was undoubtedly out upon the lagoon with some definite purpose, for it was fighting the tide, and sometimes winning; and when it won, Peter, always sympathetic to the weaker side, could not help clapping; it was such a gallant piece of paper.1
It was not really a piece of paper; it was the Never bird,2 making desperate efforts to reach Peter on her nest. By working her wings, in a way she had learned since the nest fell into the water, she was able to some extent to guide her strange craft, but by the time Peter recognized her she was very exhausted. She had come to save him, to give him her nest, though there were eggs in it. I rather wonder at the bird, for though he had been nice to her, he had also sometimes tormented her. I can suppose only that, like Mrs. Darling and the rest of them, she was melted because he had all his first teeth.
She called out to him what she had come for, and he called out to her what was she doing there; but of course neither of them understood the other’s language. In fanciful stories people can talk to the birds freely, and I wish for the moment I could pretend that this were such a story, and say that Peter replied intelligently to the Never bird; but truth is best, and I want to tell only what really happened. Well, not only could they not understand each other, but they forgot their manners.
“I—want—you—to—get—into—the—nest,” the bird called, speaking as slowly and distinctly as possible, “and—then—you—can—drift—ashore, but—I—am—too—tired—to—bring—it—any—nearer—so—you—must—try—to—swim—to—it.”
“What are you quacking about?” Peter answered. “Why don’t you let the nest drift as usual?”
“I—want—you—” the bird said, and repeated it all over.
Then Peter tried slow and distinct.
“What—are—you—quacking—about?” and so on.
The Never bird became irritated; they have very short tempers.
“You dunderheaded little jay,” she screamed, “why don’t you do as I tell you?”
Peter felt that she was calling him names, and at a venture he retorted hotly:
“So are you!”
Then rather curiously they both snapped out the same remark.
“Shut up!”
“Shut up!”
Nevertheless the bird was determined to save him if she could, and by one last mighty effort she propelled the nest against the rock. Then up she flew; deserting her eggs, so as to make her meaning clear.
Then at last he understood, and clutched the nest and waved his thanks to the bird as she fluttered overhead. It was not to receive his thanks, however, that she hung there in the sky; it was not even to watch him get into the nest; it was to see what he did with her eggs.
There were two large white eggs, and Peter lifted them up and reflected. The bird covered her face with her wings, so as not to see the last of her eggs; but she could not help peeping between the feathers.
I forget whether I have told you3 that there was a stave on the rock, driven into it by some buccaneers of long ago to mark the site of buried treasure. The children had discovered the glittering hoard, and when in a mischievous mood used to fling showers of moidores, diamonds, pearls and pieces of eight to the gulls, who pounced upon them for food, and then flew away, raging at the scurvy trick that had been played upon them. The stave was still there, and on it Starkey had hung his hat, a deep tarpaulin, watertight, with a broad brim. Peter put the eggs into this hat4 and set it on the lagoon. It floated beautifully.
The Never bird saw at once what he was up to, and screamed her admiration of him; and, alas, Peter crowed his agreement with her. Then he got into the nest, reared the stave in it as mast, and hung up his shirt for a sail. At the same moment the bird fluttered down upon the hat and once more sat snugly on her eggs. She drifted in one direction, and he was borne off in another, both cheering.
Of course when Peter landed he beached his barque in a place where the bird would easily find it; but the hat was such a great success that she abandoned the nest. It drifted about till it went to pieces, and often Starkey came to the shore of the lagoon, and with many bitter feelings watched the bird sitting on his hat. As we shall not see her again, it may be worth mentioning here that all Never birds now build in that shape of nest, with a broad brim on which the youngsters take an airing.
Mabel Lucie Attwell, Peter Pan and Wendy, 1921. (Lucie Attwell Ltd. Courtesy of Vicki Thomas Associates)
Great were the rejoicings when Peter reached the home under the ground almost as soon as Wendy, who had been carried hither and thither by the kite. Every boy had adventures to tell; but perhaps the biggest adventure of all was that they were several hours late for bed. This so inflated them that they did various dodgy things to get staying up still longer, such as demanding bandages; but Wendy, though glorying in having them all home again safe and sound, was scandalised by the lateness of the hour, and cried, “To bed, to bed,” in a voice that had to be obeyed. Next day, however, she was awfully tender, and gave out bandages to every one, and they played till bed-time at limping about and carrying their arms in slings.
Alice B. Woodward, The Peter Pan Picture Book, 1907.
1. it was such a gallant piece of paper. Like Hans Christian Andersen before him, Barrie created whimsy and humor that appealed to children by endowing inanimate objects with life. In this case, the piece of paper actually turns out to be a living being, but the effect is still there.
2. it was the Never bird. A pelican in the original production, the bird was driven from its nest by Peter, then repelled when it attacked him. Reviewers found the scene inappropriate, and Barrie made changes that turned the bird into an ally rather than an enemy. The term Never bird, like Never tree, suggests that the island has its own unique flora and fauna.
3. I forget whether I have told you. The narrator exhibits the same symptoms of short-term memory loss felt by the children who visit Neverland. Once again, he ensures that readers will not become lost in the illusion by reminding them that London and Neverland are being created for them by a narrator who appears to be improvising a tale for a “live” audience.
4. Peter put the eggs into this hat. The substitution of the pirate
’s hat for the nest was added by Barrie after reviewers protested Peter’s cavalier treatment of the bird’s nest and lack of compassion for the mother and her eggs.
CHAPTER 10
The Happy Home
One important result of the brush on the lagoon was that it made the redskins their friends. Peter had saved Tiger Lily from a dreadful fate, and now there was nothing she and her braves would not do for him. All night they sat above, keeping watch over the home under the ground and awaiting the big attack by the pirates which obviously could not be much longer delayed. Even by day they hung about, smoking the pipe of peace, and looking almost as if they wanted tit-bits to eat.
They called Peter the Great White Father,1 prostrating themselves before him; and he liked this tremendously, so that it was not really good for him.
“The great white father,” he would say to them in a very lordly manner, as they grovelled at his feet, “is glad to see the Piccaninny warriors protecting his wigwam from the pirates.”
“Me Tiger Lily,” that lovely creature would reply. “Peter Pan save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him.”
She was far too pretty to cringe in this way, but Peter thought it his due, and he would answer condescendingly, “It is good. Peter Pan has spoken.”
Always when he said, “Peter Pan has spoken,” it meant that they must now shut up, and they accepted it humbly in that spirit; but they were by no means so respectful to the other boys, whom they looked upon as just ordinary braves. They said “How-do?” to them, and things like that; and what annoyed the boys was that Peter seemed to think this all right.